LINGUIST is pleased to announce the launch of an exciting new feature: Easy Abstracts! Easy Abs is a free abstract submission and review facility designed to help conference organizers and reviewers accept and process abstracts online. Just go to: http://www.linguistlist.org/confcustom, and begin your conference customization process today! With Easy Abstracts, submission and review will be as easy as 1-2-3!

The availability of a wh-in situ strategy in typical wh-movement languages has recently been argued to exist in a number of typical wh-movement languages. The pervasive availability of wh-in situ of this type turns out to be a non-trivial issue, with implications regarding the nature of wh-movement, its effects on the interfaces and the interaction with the lexicon. The workshop aims at considering the properties of these constructions from a theoretical perspective, including questions regarding the 'optionality' of wh-in situ,the differences with 'real' in-situ, the similarities with sluicing, and the role of islands.

Call for Papers

Workshop on 'The Optionality of Wh-movement'

The availability of a wh-in situ strategy in typical wh-movement languages was originally discussed with respect to French (Aout et al. 1981; Cheng1991; Chang 1997; Bosković 1997, 2000; Cheng & Rooryck 2000, 2002; Starke 2001; Mathieu 2004; Baunaz 2005, 2008, a.o.). In recent years, the in-situ option has been argued to exist in a number of languages, such as English (Ginzburg & Sag 2001, Pires & Taylor 2007), Spanish (Uribe-Etxebarria 2002, Etxepare & Uribe-Etxebarria 2005, Reglero 2005), European Portuguese (Cheng & Rooryck 2000), Brazilian Portuguese (Kato 2004), Egyptian Arabic (Lassadi 2004), Malagasy (Sabel 2003), Greek (Sinopoulou 2007, Vlachos 2008) and Babine-Witsuwit'en (Danham 2000). The wh-in situ strategy has been broadly analyzed either as concealed (remnant or feature) movement, or as real in-situ. Despite different implementations all approaches show that the in-situ variant has different syntactic properties compared to its moved counterpart, e.g. lack of island effects (a property also shared by 'sluicing') and interpretative restrictions. It has also been pointed out that real in-situ languages give rise to different readings depending on the presence or absence of the question particle (Miyagawa 2001), raising the question whether these languages also exhibit a parallel, although differently manifested, dual pattern. The pervasive availability of wh-in situ in typical wh-movement languages turns out to be a non-trivial issue, with implications regarding the nature of wh-movement, its effects on the interfaces and the interaction with the lexicon. On the PF-interface, in-situ and moved wh-questions exhibit different intonational patterns, while on the LF interface, they provide a more restricted set of readings, an option which is not shared by 'real' in-situ languages.

The workshop aims at considering the properties of these constructions from a theoretical perspective, including questions such as the ones below: - If the wh-in situ strategy is optional, how is it captured by the computational system? - How does 'optional' wh-in situ differ (if it does) from 'real' in-situ? - What is the correlation between alternative strategies of wh-questions and the properties of the lexical elements involved? - How does 'optional' wh-in situ compare with other phenomena, such as sluicing, in terms of interpretation and island effects? What are the implications for the definition of islands?

The workshop will run in parallel to the general session of the 19th International Symposium on Theoretical and Applied Linguistics (ISTAL 19), Thessaloniki, Greece, 3-5 April 2009. Organization details will be available in due course at: http://www.enl.auth.gr/symposium19/. Papers covering any aspect of the properties of the wh-in-situ strategies are welcome.

Those interested can submit abstracts in .pdf format. Only electronic submissions will be considered. Abstracts should be anonymous and 300-500 words long (not exceeding one page A4). Send your personal information - Name, Affiliation, and Contact Email - in the body of the message and attach the abstract with title but without name and affiliation. Please note that only one single or co-authored abstract can be submitted. Submissions should be sent by 15 December 2008 to the workshop email address: whstrategygmail.com (subject 'abstract submission'). Applicants will be notified on abstract acceptance by 15 January 2009.

Presentation Format and Submission Guidelines: We invite proposals for 40-minute presentations (30-minute discussion and 10-minute Q&A) on original research or pedagogical practices related to applied linguistics. We also invite proposals for poster presentations which will be displayed for a 2-hour block of time. Poster presentations are intended to be a format for reports of work in progress. Preference will be given to proposals related to the conference theme. Paper and poster selection will be competitive. All proposals must be e-mailed.

In your email, please include: -A one-page summary without identifying information -A one-page summary with name, address, affiliation, and e-mail address -A fifty-word summary for the program book - A list of any technology requirements - "AL Conf Paper Proposal" or "AL Conf Poster Presentation" in the subject line